Soup for the Queen of Scots.

December 8th in 1542 was the birthday of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary Stewart, as we know, became Queen of Scotland at the age of six days upon the death of her father, James V. She met her untimely end as a result of her claim to the English throne, which led to her trial and execution for treason in 1587.

There is a rather mysterious soup named in her honour. Actually, several mysteries attach to The Queen of Scots Soup. The soup itself is simple enough: it is a light chicken soup with eggs and parsley stirred in at the last minute. But why or how it came to be named for her, I cannot tell, nor can I find the name of the originator. Was there ever indeed a published recipe for The Queen of Scots Soup, or was it a figment of the imagination of a nineteenth century Scottish writer?

I know of the recipe only from a secondary source – The Edinburgh Literary Journal of September 1829. The article introduces a ‘curious black-letter book’, which turns out to be the 1631 edition of Murrell’s A New Booke of Cookerie. The journal being Scottish, the writer, quite naturally, was delighted to find in its pages the recipe for The Queen of Scots Soup, and gives this (or a loose translation of it) in his article. He (it must surely be a male, in this journal at this time) begins by saying “we are seriously of the opinion that, for the sake of the Royal House of Stuart, it should immediately become a standard dish with all the defenders of Mary and her unfortunate family.”

Here is the recipe, as given by the author of the Edinburgh Literary Journal article.

The soup is made thus: “Six chickens are cut in small pieces, with the heart, gizzard, and liver well washed, then put into a stew-pan, and just covered with water, and boiled till the chickens are enough. Season it with salt and cayenne pepper; and mince parsley with eight eggs, yolks and whites beat up together. Stir round altogether just as you are going to serve it up. Half a minute will boil the eggs.”

The article went on to opine that “This must be a delicate and gentle soul, worthy of the amiable dispositions of Mary, and every way calculated to produce a beneficial effect on the female character.

My difficulty is that I am unable to find a 1631 edition of Murrell’s A New Booke of Cookerie to verify the recipe. It is not in the 1615 edition or the 1638 edition – although I admit to a quick scanning of both of these versions (I am moving house this week, so I can be forgiven, surely?) If I have missed it, or you know the actual whereabouts of this recipe, do please tell us all.

Quotation for the Day

I live on good soup, not fine words.
Molière.

To Dress Snayles.

It is strange, what we each consider disgusting in the way of food. Most of us would not consider eating cockroaches, largely because of their perceived dirty scavenging eating habits yet lust after lobsters, which are sometimes called ‘the cockroaches of the sea’ for their similar eating preferences. Snails are another opinion-dividing food – are they a disgusting garden-destroying, slimy, rubbery vermin, or a delicious appetiser?

I make no apologies for using for at least the second time the quotation at the end of the post. I think it is very funny, and it does reinforce the notion that snail-eating is a decidedly French habit. This is not, or was not true, of course. Snails were commonly used in England and many other countries in previous times, both for their perceived medicinal value and as a valuable and nourishing food.

I give you three recipes for snails – one each from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The sliminess of snails suggested their use for soothing the chest, hence their recommendation in cases of consumption and other lung complaints.

To dresse snayles.
Take your Snayles (they are no way so as in Pottage) and wash them very well in many waters, and when you have done put them in a White Earthen Pan, or very wide Dish, and put as much water to them as will cover them, and then set your Dish or Pan on some coales, that it may heat by little and little, and then the Snayles will come out of the shells and so dye, and being dead, take them out and wash them very well in Water and salt twice or thrice over; then put them in a Pipkin with Water and Salt, and let them boyle a little while in that, so take away the rude slime they have, then take them out againe and put them in a Cullender; then take excellent sallet Oyle and beat it a great while upon the fire in a frying Pan, and when it boyls very fast, slice two or three Onyons in it, and let them fry well, then put the Snayles in the Oyle and Onyons, and let them stew together a little, then put the Oyle, Onyons, and Snayles altogether in an earthen Pipkin of a fit size for your Snayles, and put as much warm water to them as will serve to boyle them and make the Pottage and season them with Salt, and so let them boyle three or foure hours; then mingle Parsley, Pennyroyall, Fennell, Tyme, and such Herbs, and when they are minced put them in a Morter and beat them as you do for Green-sauce, andput in some crums of bread soaked in the Pottage of the Snayles, and then dissolve it all in the Morter with a little Saffron and Cloves well beaten, and put in as much Pottage into the Morter as will make the Spice and bread and Herbs like thickening for a pot, so put them all into the Snayles and let them stew in it, and when you serve them up, you may squeeze into the Pottage a Lemon, and put in a little Vinegar, or if you put in a Clove of Garlick among the Herbs, and beat iti with them in the Morter, it will not tast the worse;serve them up in a Dish with sippets of Bread in the bottom. The Pottage is very nourishing, and they use them that are apt to a Consumption.
The Compleat Cook, Nathaniel Brook, 1658

To Stew Snails.
Scour them, and cleanse them well, put them into a Pipkin with Claret and Wine-vinegar, Salt, Pepper, Mace, grated Bread, Thyme shred, Capers, and the Yolks of a hard Egg or two, minc’d. Stew all these together, then put in a good piece of Butter, and shake them well together, warm a Dish, rub it with a Clove of Garlick, lay Sippets in the Dish, put on the Snails, garnish with Barberries and slices of Lemon.
The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary (1723) John Nott.

There is no sense in the previous two recipes of needing to be apologetic about the main ingredient. By the nineteenth century, perhaps sensibilities had changed – at least, that is what is suggested by the final recipe, in which the author notes that some repugnance may have to be overcome, and that the taste may be ‘mawkish’.

Snail Broth.
Wash them extremely well, and throw them into very hot water; take them out of the shell, and pass them through several waters; working them well with the hand; slice them, pound the shells, and put all into a saucepan, with as much water as will cover; boil, skim, and let them simmer for several hours; add a little salt, sugar, and a very small quantity of mace, to correct the mawkish taste: a tea-cupful may be taken four times a day, with or without conserve of roses. Should the patient have any repugnance to it in this form, let it be put into some weak veal broth; this is far preferable to slater [woodlouse] wine …
Domestic economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, (1827)

This final recipe is included in the chapter on Medicinal Soups in my new book Soup: a Global History, which is available now. You can read about it at Reaktion Press, and you can even buy it from Amazon or your preferred book supplier.

Quotation for the Day.
The French are not rude. They just happen to hate you. But that is no reason to bypass this beautiful country, whose master chefs have a well-deserved worldwide reputation for trying to trick people into eating snails. Nobody is sure how this got started. Probably a couple of French master chefs were standing around one day, and they found a snail, and one of them said: "I bet that if we called this something like `escargot,' tourists would eat it." Then they had hearty laugh, because ‘escargot’ is the French word for ‘fat crawling bag of phlegm.’
Dave Barry

Entertaining with Almonds.

I would have been impossible to put on a feast in medieval times without huge amounts of ‘marchpane’ (marzipan), and it continued to remain supreme at special occasions well into the eighteenth century for the preparation of ‘banquetting stuffe’ (sweetmeats for what we would now call the ‘dessert’ course.) The quantity (and cost) of almonds imported into Europe for the purposes of sweet treats for the wealthy, must have been staggering over these centuries – and the amount of labour to pound them all to powder by hand hardly bears thinking about.

The cooks of the time were kitchen-artists, and marchpane was a wonderful medium for their creative efforts. Marchpane could be shaped and coloured (even gilded) in a myriad ways, and all sorts of ‘subtleties’ and other wonderful items were fashioned - in 1562 Queen Elizabeth received as a New Year gift from her master cook, a chessboard made of ‘faire marchpane.’ A pale legacy of this art is in the boxes of marzipan fruits that appear in the shops in the lead-up to Christmas.

Marchpane was not just used to make ‘toys’ and gifts, it had another role in the kitchens of the wealthy. During the many strict ‘fast’ days of the religious calendar, and especially during Lent, the eating of animal products was forbidden. Almond milk could of course stand-in for real milk, and it was used preferentially much of the time anyway in many recipes – but how to ease the craving for real animal flesh? Provide the illusion of bacon and eggs made with almonds,as I showed you in previous posts, that’s how.

It has occurred to me that in the lifetime of this blog (five years and six days), I have never given you a recipe for marchpane, so here it is.


To make a March-pane.
Take two pounds of almonds being blanched and dryed in a sieve over the fire, beate them in a stone mortar, and when they bee small, mixe them with two pounds of sugar beeing finely beaten, adding two or three spoonefuls of rose-water, and that will keep your almonds from oiling: when your paste is beaten fine, drive it thin with a rowling pin, and so lay it on a bottom of wafers; then raise up a little edge on the side, and so bake it; then yce [ice] it with rose water and sugar, then put it into the oven againe, and when you see your yce is risen up and drie, then take it out of the oven and garnish it with pretie conceipts, as birdes and beasts being cast out of standing-moldes. Sticke long comfits upright into it, cast bisket and carrowaies in it, and so serve it; you may also print of this march-pane paste in your moldes for banqueting dishes. And of this paste our comfit-makers at this day make their letters, knots, armes, escutcheons, beasts, birds, and other fancies.
Delightes for Ladies, 1608

And if you like almonds, and like fun illusion food, but marzipan is not your thing, here is a delightful idea to bring a child-like pleasure to your next party.

Hedge-Hog.
Take two pounds of sweet almonds, put them into boiling water, take off the skins, save about four ounces whole, put the rest in a mortar and beat them with a little canary and orange-flower water to keep them from oiling; then beat up the yolks of twelve eggs, the whites of six, put them in and beat them well, put in a pint of cream sweeten with powder-sugar to your palate, then put it into a stew-pan; put in half a pound of fresh butter melted, set it over a stove, and stir it till it is stiff enough to be made into the shape of a hedge-hog, then put it into a dish, and cut the rest of the almonds in long slips, and stick in to represent the bristles of a hedge-hog. Boil a pint of cream, sweeten it with sugar, beat up the yolks of four eggs, the whites of two,, mix them with the cream set it over the fire, and stir it one way till it is thick then pour it round the hedge hog; let it stand till it is cold. Garnish the dish with currant jelly, and serve it up; or put a rich calf's foot jelly made clear and good instead of the cream &;c.
The English Art of Cookery (1788), by Richard Briggs.


Quotation for the Day.
Don’t eat too many almonds, they add weight to the breasts.
Colette (French novelist)

A Curious Recipe for Butter.

There is avery curious recipe for butter which I have been meaning to post for some time, in the hope that your comments will enlighten me as to how it actually ‘works’. I have never tried to roast butter, but the amazing Hannah Glasse describes the method in her wonderful The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1774). The intention seems to be to make a buttered breadcrumb topping for oysters, but I really don’t understand why it would not immediately melt off the spit and drip into the ashes – even over the very low fire she suggests. If buttered crumbs are needed, why not simply melt the butter in a pan and then toss in the breadcrumbs?

To roast a pound of butter.
Lay it in salt and water two or three hours, then spit it, and rub it all over with crumbs of bread, with a little grated nutmeg, lay it to the fire, and as it roasts, baste it with the yolks of two eggs, and then with crumb of bread all the time it is a roasting; but have ready a pint of oysters stewed in their own liquor, and lay the dish under the butter; when the bread has soaked up all the butter, brown the outside, and lay it on your oysters. Your fire must be very low.

I have searched for other recipes for roasted butter, in the hope of gaining some insight, but without success. That is not to say there are not any interesting variations of the idea however. Firstly I give you a version from The Country Housewife’s Family Companion, by William Ellis (1750), which was sliced and eaten as a sort of snack.

TO roast a Pound of Butter or more the Irish Way. Take a pound of butter, season it well with salt, and put it on a wooden spit; place it at a good distance from the fire, let it turn round, and as the butter moistens or begins to drip, drudge it well with fine oatmeal, continuing so to do till there is any moisture ready to drip, then baste it, and it will soon be enough. A certain Irish woman told me this eats very nicely, insomuch that she has done on a Christmas eve twenty-seven different pounds so, at a farmer's house in her country, where it has been kept all the holidays, to accommodate a friend with a slice or two, as we do cakes or minced pies here.

The following recipe, from a century and a half earlier, is quite different and obviously intentionally sweet – but I still don’t understand how, even with the sugar and the repeated dredging with breadcrumbs, it would stay on the spit. Do you? The recipe is from Gervase Markham’s The English Housewife (1615), and he describes how to roast the butter ‘curiously and well’. The word ‘curiously’ had different meanings in the past – it could mean ‘carefully, attentively’, ‘skilfully, exquisitely, cunningly’, and ‘finely, handsomely, beautifully’, and (but perhaps not until after Markham’s time), ‘in a way that excites interest or surprise.’

To roast a pound of butter curiously and well.
Take a pound of sweet butter and beat it stiff with sugar, and the yolks of eggs; then clap it roundwise about a spit, and lay it before a soft fire, and presently dredge it with bread crumbs; then as it warmeth or melteth, so apply it with dredging till the butter be overcomed and no more will melt to fall from it, then roast it brown, and so draw it [from the spit], and serve it out, the dish being as neatly trimmed with sugar as may be.

Quotation for the Day.
Butter is "...the most delicate of foods among barbarous nations, and one which distinguishes the wealthy from the multitude at large."
Pliny

The Ironmongers’ Feast.

Today’s historical menu comes from the seventeenth century. The liveried companies of England held annual ‘Election Days’, at which office-bearers were selected and other important business settled. Naturally, feasting was on the agenda too. For the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, on July 7, 1687, the bill of fare was as follows:

First Course.

4 hammes and 24 chickens

2 grand sallets.

2 sirloynes of beef, 1 clod.

4 dishes of turkeys, 3 in a dish

5 venison pattyes

4 tongues, 4 udders

4 dishes pullets, 2 in a dish

4 custards

Second Course.

4 dishes ducks, 3 in a dish

4 Lombard pyes

4 dishes sturgeon

4 dishes of cream and sullabubbs

4 dishes of fruite

4 dishes of tarts

Wine.

5 gallons Canary

3 gallons Rhenish

1 gallon claret

5 gallons white wine

---

20 lbs bisketts

4 lbs wafers

4 lbs double refined sugar

---

1 quar lamb, 2 rabbets (‘for the music’ – ie the musicians)

I give you the recipe for a ‘Grand Sallet’ from Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook (1660)

To make a grand Sallet of divers Compounds.
Take a cold roast capon and cut it into thin slices square and small, (or any other roast meat as chicken, mutton, veal, or neats tongue) mingle with it a little minced taragon and an onion, then mince lettice as small as the capon, mingle all together, and lay it in the middle of a clean scoured dish. Then lay capers by themselves, olives by themselves, samphire by itself, broom buds, pickled mushrooms, pickled oysters, lemon, orange, raisins, almonds, blue-figs, Virginia Potato, caperons, crucifix pease, and the like, more or less, as occasion serves, lay them by themselves in the dish round the meat in partitions. Then garnish the dish sides with quarters of oranges, or lemons, or in slices, oyl and vinegar beaten together, and poured on it over all.
On fish days, a roast, broil’d, or boil’d pike boned, and being cold, slice it as abovesaid.

Quotation for the Day.

We have said how necessary it is that in the composure of a sallet, every plant should come in to bear its part, without being overpower'd by some herb of a stronger taste, so as to endanger the native sapor and virtue of the rest; but fall into their places, like the notes in music, in which there should be nothing harsh or grating: And though admitting some discords (to distinguish and illustrate the rest) striking in all the more sprightly, and sometimes gentler notes, reconcile all dissonances, and melt them into an agreeable composition."
John Evelyn, 'Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets' (1699)

How to make a good Oxoleum.

You probably don’t need a recipe for oxoleum - I am sure you already make it regularly- but I thought you might be interested in a seventeenth recipe, to compare with your own version. An oxoleon (oxoleum, oxelam) is simply a mixture of oil and vinegar used to flavour food – in other words, it is a salad dressing – something we would nowadays call vinaigrette.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word oxoleum (in its alternative spelling of oxelam) is recorded in English usage in 1575. If I understand the etymology correctly, the word derives from a fourth century Hellenistic Greek word, and came to English via sixth century Latin. I am curious, now, and wonder at what point did the English abandon this perfectly good word with its ancient and illustrious heritage - a heritage inextricably linked with the history of Britain - for the indisputably French vinaigrette? Nor is it just a question of word usage. At some point for the mass of Britons, the idea of a simple oil and vinegar dressing for salads became viewed as a slightly nasty Continental Idea, to be eschewed, if one had a patriotic bone in one’s body, for a boiled salad dressing or a commercial ‘salad cream.’ I know this to be true, growing up in post-war northern England, where the only use for olive oil was for medicinal purposes (I seem to remember for sore ears), for which it was purchased in tiny bottles from the pharmacy (I mean ‘the chemist’)

As for vinaigrette, originally it simply meant vinegar-sauce. In seventeenth century England – French things being very fashionable at the time – a vinaigrette was a ‘a condiment prepared with vinegar’ such as pickled cucumbers. It did not become vinaigrette dressing until the second half of the nineteenth century in England. The supporting reference cited by the OED for this change in English usage is from one of my favourite sources – Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1877).

The dictionary (which does not list oxoleum) certainly attributes the idea of an oil and vinegar dressing to the French:

Vinaigrette, Sauce à la: This sauce is much used in Paris for cold viands. Sauce à la Vinaigrette is composed of salad oil, vinegar, finely chopped parsley, and shallots, onions, or chives, with pepper and salt to taste.
The dictionary goes on to discuss the uses and variations of this sauce, but as this post is about oxoleum, I thought I would give you the earliest recipe for it that I know – from Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets, by John Evelyn, 1699.

Then, for the Oxoleon; Take of clear, and perfectly good Oyl-Olive, three Parts; of sharpest Vinegar, (sweetest of all Condiments), Limon, or Juice of Orange, one Part; and therein let steep some Slices of Horse-radish, with a little Salt; Some in a separate Vinegar, gently bruise a Pod of Guinny-Pepper, straining both the Vinegars apart, to make Use of Either, or One alone, or of both, as they best like; then add as much Tewkesbury, or other dry Mustard grated, as will lie upon an Half-Crown Piece: Beat, and mingle all these very well together; but pour not on the Oyl and Vinegar, 'till immediately before the Sallet is ready to be eaten: And then with the Yolk of two new-laid Eggs (boyl'd and prepar'd, as before is taught) squash, and bruise them all into mash with a Spoon; and lastly, pour it all upon the Herbs, stirring, and mingling them 'till they are well and throughly imbib'd; not forgetting the Sprinklings of Aromaticks, and such Flowers, as we have already mentioned, if you think fit, and garnishing the Dish with the thin Slices of Horse-Radish, Red Beet, Berberries &c.

Note, That the Liquids may be made more, or less Acid, as is most agreeable to your Taste.

The French are notoriously protective of their language, to an extent which seems to many of the rest of us to represent nationalism gone down a ridiculous blind alley. Also it seems pointless - languages are dynamic things, ever adapting and changing, and the meaning of individual words not constant across time. I would hate to be thought to be one of the frozen language crowd, but nevertheless, there is something sad about the complete loss of a lovely word such as oxoleon, when the actual thing still remains – leaving no option but the substitution of a ‘foreign’ word – especially one with a slightly different meaning, such as vinaigrette.

I think I will start the Society to Save Old Food Words.

From henceforth, my salads will be dressed with oxoleum.


Quotation for the Day.

To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one’s vinegar.
Oscar Wilde.

How Useful are Turnips?

Unless they are tiny, and called navets, and served with duck, in Paris, by a handsome waiter (with a French accent, naturally), turnips lack both elegance and sex-appeal, methinks. Not that I don’t like them, but we are talking image here. Turnips are most likely to evoke ideas of robust peasant farmers and cold days and thick soup, and they are hardly featured in early cookery books, which describe the food of the well-to-do. Nevertheless, useful things are, well, useful, and we must celebrate useful too, must we not?

The turnip is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the fleshy, globular or spheroidal root of a biennial cruciferous plant, Brassica Rapa, var. depressa, having toothed, somewhat hairy leaves, and yellow flowers, cultivated from ancient times as a culinary vegetable, and for feeding sheep and cattle; also, the plant itself, of which the young shoots (turnip-tops) are frequently boiled as greens.’ As I said, not elegant or sexy, but an ancient, hairy-leaved, animal food. The first quotation in the OED supports its useful, nourishing quality: from Elyot’s Castel of Helth (1533) we read ‘Turnepes beinge well boyled in water, and after with fatte fleshe, norysheth moche.’ I note that the entire list of quotations is devoid of reference to turnip flavour or other deliciousness.

How useful are turnips, really? They turn up in the medicinal chapter of The Queen’s Closet Opened. Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chirugery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery (1655)

Syrup of Turneps.
First bake the Turneps in a pot with houshold bread, then press out the liquor between two platters, put a pint of this liquor to half a pint of Hysop water, and as much brown Sugar Candy as will sweeten it, and boyl it to the consistence of a Syrup. It is very good for a Cold or Consumption.

And how much more useful can a recipe be than the following one from the same era – cheap bread for the poor, with medicinal qualities to boot?

Turnip bread.
Take about half a Bushel of middling sort of Turnips, not sticky, but such as will boil soft: being pared and boiled, press out the Water very hard until they are quite dry, beat them in a Mortar, and mix with the Pulp about two pound of fine Wheat-flower, and two ounces of Carraway-seeds; put in a pint, or somewhat more of new Ale-yeast, mould it up as other Bread, and let it be well soaked, and it will not only look, but tast like Bread. This is not only made for saving Charges in poor Families in a dear Year, but of late has been much in esteem for Consumptions, and those troubled with shortness of Breath and Ptissick; being very wholesome and nourishing.
William Salmon’s Household Companion (1695)

Wine is pretty useful too, although I doubt if there were some good shiraz grapes around that this recipe would be popular.

To make Turnip Wine.
Take good many turnips, pare, slice and put them in a cyder press, and press out all the juice very well. To every gallon of juice have three pounds of lump-sugar, have a vessel ready just big enough to hold the juice, put your sugar into a vessel, and also to every gallon of juice half a pint of brandy. Pour in the juice and lay something over the bung for a week, to see if it works. If it does you must not bung it down till it has done working; then stop it close for three months, and draw it off in another vessel. When it is fine, bottle it off.
The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse (1774)


Quotation for the Day.
A degenerate nobleman is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.
English saying.